MegBusset has a big boy!

I had had a sweep on Tuesday morning (41+1) which didn't seem to have much effect. But woke up on Weds at 4am with fairly regular contractions, about 10 mins apart, which went on til about 6am but then tailed off over the rest of the morning. They came on again in the afternoon, and by around 5pm were about 5 mins apart and strong enough to have to stop and breathe through. Knew that I wanted to get on the MLU that evening as I'd been threatened with induction the next morning, so decided to go in once DS1 was in bed.

Arrived at hospital around 8pm and met lovely MW who had just come on shift and stayed with us the whole time. Was told that I was 4cm dilated and could stay in. I was the only labouring woman on the unit all night so it was lovely and peaceful. Started on the G&A at 9pm, which actually worked this time. By around midnight I could feel the head pushing down on my cervix so had an internal which showed that I was around 8-9cm dilated and that the waters were bulging out. MW said she thought once the waters had gone I would be ready to push, so tried standing, walking and doing stupid dancing but they refused to go.

By around 2am the cx had got a lot more painful and the waters still hadn't gone. Was offered pethidine but didn't want to slow things down so said no and managed to persuade the MW to break my waters. Cx immediately got much stronger and really bloody painful, and the baby's heart rate slowed down so were rushed downstairs to a delivery room on the labour ward for monitoring. At this point the real pain started (and I started moaning and yelling quite a lot too!). I got a bit arsey about being made to lie on my back for monitoring, as it was so much more painful. Luckily baby's heart rate seemed to stabilise.

I was begging for more pain relief at this stage so DH got them to line up an epidural ready to go if I needed it. In the mean time I had a shot of Meptid just to try to take the edge off the agony -- did bugger all, though. Just as I was about to give in and go for the epidural, I was allowed to turn over and kneel against the back of the bed, and got the urge to push. After 15-20 mins of pushing (and a lot more screaming ) DS2 came out at 3.52am -- all 8lb 15oz of him. After resting for a few hours we brought him home around 1pm, to the great delight of DS1 who insists on kissing his little brother every other minute.